Category Archives: Global Software Updates

Apple's Swift programming language, debuted last year, has seen fairly wide use since its inception, counting LinkedIn, Yahoo Weather and Clear as apps that currently make use of it. Described as "Objective-C without the baggage of C" by one Apple software engineer, the new programming language has made app creation for iPhones, iPads and Mac computers significantly easier.

The tech giant has now opened up the programming language, allowing developers and programmers outside of Apple to dig into Swift, try it on different platforms, and contribute to its ongoing development.

Just as Google has made it essential for your site to be mobile-friendly, another big industry change that promises to benefit all internet users could be on the way. Luckily, just like having a responsive design, it's probably something you've been considering - if not already doing - for quite some time.

Basically, if your site isn't secure, you could be seeing a drop in search engine rank and a depreciated value in browsers. This means making use of Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption to switch to HTTPS as soon as possible.

A week ago, Google announced that its mobile-friendly algorithm began rolling out globally. This means that mobile-friendliness is now officially a ranking factor in searches performed on mobile devices. Whether or not this is the "mobilegeddon" some bloggers have deemed it to be, chances are good that your site traffic from Google will be affected in some way.

Indeed, initial reports seem to indicate that a large number of non-mobile-friendly sites have been negatively affected, while some sites that do pass Google's mobile-friendly test are getting a boost.

Fake likes and profiles have been a nuisance on Facebook for years. Instead of earning likes organically, some page owners choose to purchase likes as a way of increasing the perceived popularity of their page. Unfortunately, this shortcut can end up being detrimental to legitimate businesses and has led to accusations that Facebook ads are worthless.

While Facebook has been fighting against fake likes for a long time, it now seems that they're as close as ever to solving the problem. This is good news for everyone on the social network.

Back in November, Google announced they'd be labeling sites as "mobile-friendly" in the search engine results when those sites meet a specific set of criteria. Later, as you're probably aware, Google announced they'd be changing their algorithm to rank sites more highly if they're mobile-friendly. This has many webmasters scrambling to improve their sites' mobile capacity, as the change will begin rolling out in less than a week.

What you may not have noticed, however, is that Bing has been making the same changes at about the same times.